Riley Stearns' The Art of Self-Defense is a movie that was barely on my radar, until I read this article (which contains spoilers) on Slate. In this case, spoiling the movie actually intrigued me enough to watch it.
It's an odd little movie that is a rather bleak dark comedy. It's one of those movies where everyone speaks very robotically, with flat affect--like a Wes Anderson movie or Napoleon Dynamite, only with a lot more violence (aside for dog lovers: DON'T SEE THIS MOVIE).
Jesse Eisenberg plays a typical Eisenbergian character--a severely beta male, if such a thing exists. His character, Casey, is a 35 year old bachelor who lives alone with his dachshund and works in accounting. One night when he goes out to buy some dog food, he is chased down and beaten to a pulp by some anonymous people on motorcycles. Casey survives and, in his quest to regain a sense of safety, wanders into a karate class lead by a man who goes by Sensei (Alessandro Nivola, doing great work here).
Casey joins up as the new white belt and quickly advances to yellow belt. After some prodding by Sensei, he admits that the reason he started classes is because he is afraid of everything, including other men. "I want to be what intimidates me" he confesses. Sensei invites him to join the "night class", which is basically Fight Club. The students are allowed to beat the shit out of each other, the only rule being "no guns" since "guns are for the weak".
Although clearly in over his head, Casey starts coming to night class. He begins to observe Sensei's blatant misogyny when the only female student, Anna (Imogene Poots), is not given the black belt she clearly deserves while another male classmate, Thomas, is allowed to advance over her, despite being not as good a fighter as her. Sensei bluntly tells Casey, "I realized that Anna being female would always stand in the way of her becoming male." Additionally, Sensei encourages Casey to pick up more masculine hobbies and interests: instead of learning French (Casey is a Francophile), Sensei tells him to learn German. Instead of listening to adult contemporary music, Sensei tells him to listen to metal. In his quest to become more of a violent, alpha male, Casey does as Sensei's instructs....until a shocking secret is revealed.
*Stop here if you want to avoid spoilers!*
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Casey finds out that it was Sensei himself, and his students, who beat him up and put him in the hospital. In fact, they would have killed him if it were not for Anna who pretended to hear sirens and lead the group away before they could finish him off. Additionally, the male student who was promoted to black belt over Anna broke into Casey's house and killed his dog. Casey finds all of this out after *he* is taken along on a motorcycle ride and encouraged to beat up an unsuspecting victim.
After making this discovery, Casey plots out a simple, yet effective plan for revenge. He challenges Sensei to "an unarmed fight to the death". Sensei agrees. As soon as the fight commences, Casey pulls out a gun and shoots Sensei in the head. Later that evening, at night class, he sics his new dog (a German Shepherd gifted to him by Sensei) on Thomas, the asshole who killed his last dog. Casey promotes Anna to the head of the class, and he himself takes his proper place as the lowest member of the night class.
Obviously, if you're not prepared for it, The Art of Self-Defense goes from "quirky dark comedy" to "violent pitch-black comedy" real quick. And anyone who has ever taken karate knows that basically the whole point of it is to AVOID violence (let alone murder) in the first place. But that seems to be the point Stearns is trying to make here--poking fun at the culture of toxic masculinity. While Casey is indeed a timid weirdo, he's also a good person and a person who understands justice and fairness. Sensei (real name: Leslie. He makes fun of Casey for having a "feminine" name and his name is Leslie!) is using martial arts to express his violent urges and calling it "masculinity". Likewise, our culture has allowed male violence, sexual and physical, to go...perhaps not "unchecked"...but to fly under the radar as "boys will be boys" and "that's just how men are". The Art of Self-Defense just takes toxic masculinity to an extreme. It also shows how futile and how much of a performance it is by having Casey break "the rules" and straight up shoot Sensei in the head. He tells Sensei's dead body "You might say that using a gun makes me weak, and maybe it does. But you are dead and I am alive, so I would argue that *you* are the weaker man". Male bluster only goes so far and it ends up eating its own tail.
The Art of Self-Defense is overall a decent film. It's not incredibly profound, but it's entertaining and ballsy in a certain way. I could have done without the affected robot voices--I felt like Stearns used the flat, blunt way of speaking as an almost protective measure against getting too close to the characters. Would have been interesting if he had allowed us to be more emotionally invested in them by fleshing them out into *real* people instead of caricatures.
Grade: B
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